“We are committed to achieving a majority carbon-free electricity sector by 2035,” they said in a statement released after a meeting of climate and energy ministers in Berlin.
To achieve this goal, the countries pledge “to support the acceleration of the global phase-out of coal” and to “rapidly develop the technologies and policies necessary for the transition to clean energy”.
This is the first time that the seven industrial powers (United States, Japan, Canada, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany) have committed together to such an objective.
The ministers also promised to end overseas financing of fossil fuel projects without carbon capture technology by "the end of 2022".
This announcement was made possible thanks to a reversal of Japan, the last country in the group which refused to commit to this question.
Twenty countries, including the other G7 states, had already signed a declaration to this effect last November, during COP 26 in Glasgow.
Robert Habeck, German Minister of Economy and Climate, at a press conference in Berlin, May 27, 2022 John MACDOUGALL AFP
"It's good that Japan, the world's largest financier of fossil fuels, has joined the other G7 countries," Alden Meyer, expert for the European Think Tank E3G, told AFP.
The G7 states also recalled their common objective of eliminating all direct subsidies to fossil fuels "by 2025".
"Rewarding behavior that is harmful to the climate with subsidies (...) is absurd and this absurdity must be eliminated", commented Robert Habeck, German Minister for the Economy and Climate, during a press conference. Friday.
According to the NGO Oil Change International, between 2018 and 2020, the G20 countries alone financed such projects to the tune of 188 billion dollars, mainly through multilateral development banks.
© 2022 AFP